Guilt
by fliortia
Summary: Elena is contemplating her feelings for Damon when he arrives in her room. The guilt Stefan is nearby all but disapears when she is with him. One-Shot.


**_~Guilt~_**

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Guilt was consuming Elena. She felt it every time she looked at Stefan, but sensed Damon in her periphery. Every time she spent moments laughing with Damon, when really she had come to the boarding house looking for Stefan - her boyfriend. Elena should feel nothing for the older brother. Not a thing. But she did, there was no denying it, feelings of some sort were building inside her.

She contemplated this while writing in her diary, a place she felt she could entertain the impossible, think about things that her rational mind would quite simply dismiss as ridiculous.

_He is dangerous and I am wrong to be tempted by him - I know this. Yet when I am in his presence I can't help but forget the entire world, all my deepest, darkest fears and worries and responsibilities and just feel safe. The last thing I should feel with him. But being with him seems easy - right, somehow. This is wrong, all wrong, Stefan doesn't approve, he doesn't trust his brother and I have more than enough reasons not to but I can't help but feel he is seriously misunderstood. I have seen glimpses of humanity that outshine those spells of pure evil which drive so many away, I can only hope that he may-_

"Soul searching, Elena?" The voice came from right beside her ear, she could feel his cool breath caressing her skin.

Elena fell off the window seat, and tumbled heavily onto the carpet of her bedroom. Damon sat on the window ledge, chuckling as she huffed angrily and desperately clutched her diary to her chest, hoping he hadn't read a word. They sat for a while, examining each other, her on the floor and him on the window ledge, clearly enjoying the furious blush that refused to fade from her cheeks.

"Did you read...?" She wanted - no, _needed_ - to know the answer but she couldn't seem to get the words out, the consequences if he said yes were too horrific for her to contemplate.

"Not if you don't want me to have," he answered with a smirk. He walked towards her then, sitting down beside her on the floor.

"He can't... This... Just please don't say anything to Stefan." It didn't sound right, even to her own ears. It sounded like a promise between hidden lovers, too intimate for her liking and she knew that Damon was most likely thinking the same thing, but she couldn't take back the words.

"Your wish, my command." He answered without looking at her, lightly stroking the cover of her diary. She knew how breakable she was to him, knew how he could crush her, break her with a mere twist and flick of his wrist. Yet she had never felt so vulnerable and weak as she did now, when he wasn't even threatening her. He could wrench the little book from her hands using only a little of his energy and would immediately know all of her deepest, darkest secrets, how much she had been scrutinising her feelings for the Salvatore brothers - both of them.

Damon seemed to sense her discomfort and withdrew his hand.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Elena." He said, breaking the silence that pressed heavily upon them. His voice, so young and innocent in that moment, forced her to look up and meet his gaze. He had said it before, not in so many words - but in his actions. It was in that moment, looking into his eyes, she realised that she had never truly believed it before. But she did now.

"I know." She replied, her voice strong. The silence returned, but it didn't feel heavy - merely comfortable. It didn't take long before Damon rose, and held out his hand to help Elena to stand beside him. She stared at it for a while, almost as if she wasn't quite sure what he wanted her to do with it, then looked at his face. It was wrong, tonight had already been a mistake, she shouldn't have felt so relaxed with him alongside her in her _bedroom_, so she chose to stand by herself and faced him cautiously, willing him with her eyes to understand.

"I know." He said, shrugging, answering her wordless plea

"Why did you come, Damon?" Elena asked, suddenly weary.

He didn't answer for a moment, didn't pause until he was perched on the edge of her window ledge. "You aren't the worst company in the world, Elena." He replied, repeating the line he had said so long ago when everything was so much easier to understand. A time when Damon was bad and Stefan was good and everything in the world was black and white without those shades of grey which constantly seem to get in the way.

Long after Damon left Elena was sat once again on her window seat, her closed diary resting on her lap, the flimsy cover consealing the inner workings of her mind and heart. Guilt had, of course, returned once Damon's presence had left her, returned at full force with the knowledge that Stefan, her boyfriend, had only been on the other side of town while she sat with his brother whom he despised and would trust with nothing.

Yes, it was wrong for her to want Damon. It was wrong for her to be so like the woman who started it all when she had sworn right from the start they were nothing alike.

It was wrong, it was pathetic and it was cruel - yet she coukdn't help her feelings, as much as she wanted to.

As she gazed out into the night, she hoped for a shooting star to interrupt the inky blackness - she could really use a wish right now.

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_Not so sure if I like this. I wrote it quickly and just wanted to post it, but let me know what you think! Oh, and I know the last line is so unbelievably cheesy that you are well within your rights to cringe in near-pain at it but the song was on TV and I actually like the first part so... Deal with it :)  
Please, please review - I love writing so much and to hear the opinion's of others when it comes to my work makes me feel incredibly warm and fuzzy inside._


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